Communicating Faster Than the Speed of Light

Today, getting information from one place to another is a far cry from the days of the Pony Express. In the future, will we be able to send information at faster than light speeds? And does that mean we'll be able to send information... to the past? From Google Fiber to Quantum Entanglement, Jonathan Stickland explores the future of high speed data on Fw:Thinking.

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[TitusIV]

At 3:33 you mentioned the information you would send through entanglement would arrive before you would even send it, creating a paradox. Actually, your message would arrive at exactly at the same time as you would send it, since entanglement would allow you, like you said at 2:45 to 3:10, to communicate instantaneously and not to communicate in the past !

Let's say you had an entangled detonation device to blow up the sun, as soon as you would blow up the sun, it would instantly blow up according to quantum mechanics, but from the earth the sun would still shine for another 8 minutes since the light from the explosion will take 8 minutes to reach us on earth. Now although you know the sun blew up less than 8 minutes ago, you would still see the sun how it looked before, but seing the sun as it was in the past doesn't mean you can prevent the past from happening as it already happened, the sun did explode ! This is why there is no paradox here!

In addition, can we still talk about speed when something is instantaneous ? I see speed as the motion something travels at trough space, but if you go from one point to another instantaneosly you have no speed, therefore you're not breaking Eintsein's speed limit ! But this is another subject and only my personnal opinion :) !

[douglasalderman]

its not really traveling to the past though so theirs no paradox.

[ThatMrTC]

"or if Jawa's had sold it for scrap parts".... and with that... SUBSCRIBED

[MrClaushk]

I dont get that last part, using quantum entanglement as a way of communication doesnt interrupt with the speed limit of light. I dont really get that paradox, the universe could be one concience in time. Its just the travel between distance that we make as time, as he said it took 14 minutes for the information to get to earth. But the moment it landed was the same in time as on earth, and that would quantum entanglement not in my mind interrupt despite the distance. But just a Danish guy :)

[williampennjr.]

nothing is faster than my wife realizing I went in the kitchen.

[i_am_aladeen]

One hurdle that nobody should argue against: The particles that you entangle, they themself cannot travel faster than light.
So you will have to wait at least 150, 000 years before it gets to the other side of the galaxy, and then you can do the experiment and find out if it is possible to transmit information faster than light via quantum-entanglement.

[Lobos]

That time thing is actually wrong. Because just like speed. Its relevant to your position. Thats why you can move stuff around in a car while driving and not see all of it plastered at the back of the car.

Point being. If you sent a quantum message to a planet 100 light years away. You wouldnt be sending a message back in time just because the light takes a 100 years to get to you from their star. Because time is relevant to the persons position. Both of the people communicating would be in the present time. Despite both of you ALSO being able to look up at the sky and see a 100 year old star light from the past.

[williamchao]

Right. You don't know. It is already done in China Aug.16, 2016.

[hackkpo]

From my point of view, quantum entanglement is the future of communication. It's seems that nothing could be faster than light, but maybe the entanglement is not a transmition, it may be like a window of a whole in spacetime or something like that. I'm speaking without being a physicist.

[nenjyx]

'Traveling' faster than light, faster than 300k km/sec, is possible. By 'traveling', i mean transmission, but not translation(yet). It is possible to transmit data faster than light. What do you think will be the fastest way to send a message from earth to the moon for example? Light? A connecting wire from earth to moon? Something more basic: imagine a long physical stick from earth to the moon. One push at one end of the stick is like sending a message to the other end, INSTANTLY. Transmission faster than light.

On the other hand, instant translational speed... is teleportation, which is harder to observe, if ever it occurs. It's like pausing a video on a single frame in time and moving objects within that frame. That is how moving through space without moving through time occurs.

[mrcleanisin]

I am demonstrating that a stick is faster than the speed of light. I have had this idea since the 70's and I have presented it to many people, but of course I have no way to actually conduct the experiment. We know that light travels at 186, 000 miles per second and that the moon is 240, 000 miles from earth, and it would take 1.3 seconds for light to reach the moon. If a bell was placed on the moon and could be rung by a photo sensor on the moon activated by someone firing a laser beam at it from earth, it would ring 1.3 seconds from the button being pushed. Now if it were possible to extend a solid object from the earth to the moon and that object was an inch away from the bell and the earth end was pushed, how long would it take to ring the bell? [Note: On 2-2-2023 I am adding this clarification to this puzzle because all the other comments to questions similar to mine focus on the stick traveling at some ridiculous speed that causes it to explode or whatever. My stick is not moving fast at all. It's taking 1 second to travel 1 inch, but it still rings the bell before the laser which takes 1.3 seconds.] In the experiment I used wires to run to my simulated moon because I don't have a photo sensor setup. Note: light and electricity both travel at the same speed.

[markconger]

I'm tiptoeing on eggshells here but from what I can gather from the reports of late, transmitting information (i.e. communicating) faster than the speed of light is indeed possible.  I can hear the naysayers already flexing their fingers just eager to type a dissertation arguing with me.  But, first, please consider two things.  


Second, when someone says "traveling faster than the speed of light" there is an implication that something containing mass is the traveler.  And that, as far as we know, IS impossible.  BUT, information is not mass.  Can we agree on that?  If so, then the argument about faster than light travel being impossible doesn't really apply with regard to communication - at least insofar as quantum entanglement is concerned.  This is a subtle difference, but if you can put mass and information into separate camps, I believe the naysayers may not be quite so convinced that no other opinion than their own disbelief is true.

Having said all of that, I do wonder that in light (pardon the pun) of the proof of quantum entanglement being faster than light, if perhaps there is another time measurement we have yet to discover - the time it takes entangled protons to communicate.  This would certainly be logical if such a delay is discovered.  It would set an entirely new precedent for science.  In honor of Albert Einstein, I humbly propose we call it spooky speed.

[Biskawow]

3:40 there is no paradox, time is weird.

[fcseven]

Why are these types of videos always so dumbed down. Some of us want information not a laugh.

[robdev]

The explanation of faster than light ‘communication’ using QE is wrong. This is impossible. If you entangle two particles, A and B, send the particles off in different directions, then perform a measurement on A, determine its spin for example, the act of measuring the spin of A will instantaneously set the spin of B, regardless of the distance between A and B, But to communicate a message using QE you would need to transfer the details of what measurement was done on A to the detector observing the spin of B, which could not be done faster than the speed of light, so causality is not violated. The best way to understand this is to consider what is observed at B I.e. a random sequence of 1s and 0s corresponding to one of the two possible spin values. It is only when this sequence is compared with the sequence of 1s and 0s corresponding to the measurements performed on A can you establish the coherence of the two sequences. The application of quantum communication is to prevent eavesdropping.

[lbuday]

People think you need to be able to influence the particles to communicate you just need a lot of entangled particles in a row and then use one side to check only certain ones (101101010) and then from the other side just check it and it will tell you which ones were opened and which ones were not.

[a.ielimba]

Sub space is just that, the spectrum of nano frequencies, or energy signiture's.
💚💚💚💚💚💚

But like a phone in a building with no phone signal, due to obstruction's. This is a example and analogy of normal instance's of our environment. When tvs use to get static on air wave tv, or how radio signals go further away then internet signal's.
It is due to how the signals interact with the environment.
If one could easily communicate signals through a mountain, that's a basic example of sub space communication. When you take it out further then that to the extreme and true sub space level's. This idea of either receiving and sending sub space signal's to outer space. For long range interaction, would be possible due to the effects of that process.

It seams like internet and 5g as it is, is going in the wrong direction of progress. Yes theirs more data, but their is more static, or obstruction's. That being said, radio had less obstruction's and less data.

Real progress should go towards subspace communication. As their would be way more less static and way more less obstruction's. Theirs a way for plenty of data to work through this spectrum of subspace, we just got to find it.
Maybe it's through the interaction's of nano microscopic structure's, that the signiture's are transmitted through between everything.
In which signal's bypass normal matter, as there would be less substances in the way. I like how everything is basically matter and energy, within density of reality, it has substance, or essense.

[wolfieperrinaybara]

the biggest problem with using quantum entanglement for communication (which btw is used very well in the Ender series of books) is that interacting with them destroys the entanglement :( so while we could theoretically entangle a MASSIVE number of particles and then use them... as each is manipulated the waveform would collapse and that particle would cease to be useful for any further transmission of information.

[DarthEditous]

"will we be able to send information at faster than light speeds?"
I'll save you four minutes. No we won't. There's a theorem specifically about this, called the No-communication Theorem.

[thedigitalmelon]

In theory you could if you had a really long pole between 2 points and moved it forwards and backwards to represent 1s and 0s